


Simple as That

by lodessa



Category: Angel: the Series, Jossverse
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-10
Updated: 2008-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:36:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post-finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simple as That

Faith sometimes seriously curses Giles for being such a know-it-all. If the rest of them had listened to her in the first place, they’d have all been in Hell-A a lot earlier and she wouldn’t be sitting here in an uncomfortable grayish green hospital chair. As it was, B and the others were at least an hour behind them and probably wouldn’t have come at all if she hadn’t jumped in against their will. She remembers Buffy, back in Sunnydale, following her down into the sewers against her will. For all her big talk, sometimes B is kind of a follower.

She looks at the man in the hospital bed, thinks of Robin and his promise to surprise her, thinks of the fact that they haven’t found Wesley’s body, thinks of the way her own blade sank into her belly at Buffy’s hands, thinks of Angelus biting into her flesh. California… always a party. The doctors seem less hopeless than they did an hour ago. Faith’s pretty sure that Willow worked some mojo that made Gunn’s insides knit together in a way that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

B and Angel have been gone for longer than she cares to think about, coffee indeed. Faith wants to be surprised, but she’s not. She’s never been anything but a stand in for either of them, so now she’s standing in for Angel, sitting at Gunn’s bedside. In the past, she’s been told her bedside manner could use some work.

Gunn’s a real warrior, tough and to the point. Faith dug that about him, when she met him last time. Maybe he won’t expect more than she can give upon waking.

She’s right too. He asks for water and doesn’t expect answers to questions he doesn’t ask. They play cards. Buffy and Angel show up a few days later, guilty and glowing. They are banished from the sickbed. Faith thinks they shouldn’t bother pretending that they mind.

They shouldn’t bother pretending like anyone else matters anymore, like she matters.

She stays with Gunn through his convalescence, even though she’s had enough of hospitals to last a lifetime and they barely know each other. It’s sort of a meditative choice, like staying in prison almost. Neither of them has someone who should be here instead. He doesn’t mind her restlessness because he’s itching for action just as badly.

They celebrate his release with beer and staking a few vamps. She can tell he’s frustrated with the limitations of his condition. She doesn't pry. He doesn’t have any Slayer healing to let him wake up out of a coma and paint the town red immediately.

They patrol every night and eat a metric ton of food and he starts to regain his physical grace and she notices. Fighting with B was always a competition; Gunn’s the kind of guy who’s always got your back. Before this latest apocalypse, she was playing mother to a house full of girls, trying to be like her first watcher, before everything went bad.

It was exhausting. She wasn’t that person, full of inspiration and guidance. Faith hadn’t had time to think about herself or the past. She’d intended to go back to Cleveland after LA, but apparently Spike is doing really well there with the girls and maybe, just maybe, she can stay here in Arizona for a while longer.

Gunn doesn’t ask or demand. He just does what needs to be done. So then they get back to the apartment after a particularly vigorous dusting section and she’s feeling that urge and the door to the bathroom isn’t actually locked while he’s in there taking a shower, she doesn’t hesitate to join him, lean bodies pressing up against each other and maybe it’s a test of whether he’s the real thing, but he hands her a towel and goes to order Chinese, and she’s pretty sure he passed.

They slay, and they gorge, and they fuck with the same enthusiasm that they do both those first things. They are comrades and there is no need to confide in each other, because it’s all more obvious than things had been complicated back in Sunnydale, when Faith parted from Buffy every time needing a cold shower and a good punching bag.

He takes as good as he gets, and Faith remembers what she told Buffy so long ago, “Want, Take, Have”; sometimes life really is that simple.


End file.
